Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

An Obstinate Senate

By Alan
Caruba

Congress
was not designed to operate in this fashion. In practice, the Senate is supposed to
conference with the House to arrive at a compromise solution.

“The
Senate voted 54-46 to reject a motion to go to conference with the House on the
issue of funding the government, marking the third time in 24 hours the Senate
has rejected an overture from the House related to avoiding a government
shutdown. Senate Democrats have insisted they will accept from the House only a
six-week funding bill with no provisions related to Obamacare.” – www.politico.com, Tuesday, October 1.

In a history of the Senate, “The Most Exclusive Club”, published in 2005, Lewis
l. Gould noted that “For most members, as the 1990s began, it was more business
as usual. That process led to another ten-year period when the Senate slipped
further in public esteem and failed to meet its political responsibilities. By
the end of the century, civility and a sense of common purpose had vanished
from much of what the Senate did.”

Gould
is the Centennial Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Texas. “Political
oratory has been in steady decline over the course of the past century, if the
Senate is any indication. Most Senators read speeches that staff has written
for them. In hearings members often rely on questions that staff has prepared…Few
modern Senators can think on their feet or make a sustained argument without
supporting information or props. ’We’re just no longer a debating forum,’ said Robert
C. Byrd in October 2004.”

“It
is hard to overstate this loss to American political life,” said Gould. “The
Framers of the Constitution envisioned a Senate that would function as a wise
and judicious check on both executive power and the House of Representatives.
They did not imagine a body that would act as a rubber stamp for an incumbent
president.”

The
recent marathon speeches by Senators Rand Paul (KY) and Ted Cruz (TX), both
Republicans and both elected with Tea Party movement support, have invigorated
what little passes for debate.

The
current membership of the Senate is 53 Democrats, 45 Republicans, and 2
independents.

Each
State has two Senators for a total of 100. They are elected for terms of six
years.

In
practice, the members of the Senate have generally regarded the members of the House
with a bit of disdain, given that they must hustle to be reelected every two
years and tend to the constituency of a particular district. This attitude was
reflected in the way the Senate went home for the weekend while the House
stayed in session to address the possibility of a shutdown.

How
long the impasse will continue is anyone’s guess, but the cause is the growing
public concern over the Affordable Care Act otherwise known as Obamacare. It is
so abundantly a disaster that the Democrats have decided to brazen their way
toward its full implementation while the Republicans are reflecting the outcry
from tens of thousands of telephone calls, email, and all other manner of
communication.

In
short, the Republicans are doing what is expected of politicians while the
Democrats are expressing their contempt for the voters. It is the same contempt
that led to the near-midnight, 2009 party line vote in the Senate that passed
Obamacare. None of the Senators had read the huge bill that is filled with many
new taxes and puts the government in charge of one sixth of the nation’s
economy and, in effect, the entire healthcare system. Its impact is already
being felt as large companies lay off more and more workers while smaller ones
put them in a part-time status, reducing the number of hours with which they
can earn a living.

“We
had to pass it to find out what was in it,” said the then-Speaker of the House,
Nancy Pelosi. Significantly, no Republican in either the House or Senate voted
for Obamacare.

The
intransigence of Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), the Majority Leader of the Senate,
reflecting the same view as President Obama, is the reason why the shutdown has
occurred. There is much more to this than just politics, though obviously both
parties are rolling the dice as to the outcome of the 2014 midterm elections.

To
their credit, I think the Republicans have the high ground. Despite the
criticisms, they have shown a united front in their effort to delay Obamacare’s
implementation for a year, strip out the taxes on medical instruments, and
require that members of Congress and their staffs enroll in the program in the
same way everyone else must.

Ultimately,
it is the Tea Party movement that will get the credit for resisting Obamacare
and it should surprise no one that the White House and Harry Reid keep calling
them terrorists, anarchists, extortionists, and other names.

It
will be interesting to watch President Obama say whatever he can to affect the
outcome of the shutdown. With nearly five years in office and with a thick
volume of lies he told about Obamacare to get its passage, he is likely to
suffer a significant injury to his power to influence events in the days and
years ahead.

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.